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Thursday, 3 October 2013

September 2013

Hello again folks,I've beavered away over the last few weekends, athough this week has been a bit slower and so will most weeks now as I am now employed from around 8.30am till 4, and tend to be a bit tired when I come back. This unfortunately impacts on my speed of posting on here. Anyway, Dice and Decks has said it's goodbyes to Neal, who has moved to Australia, he will be missed. As a Mantic pathfinder, Neal introduced Kings of War and Dreadball to the club, as well as Privateer Press' Warmachine and Hordes. Kings of War is a major part of this week's update here on my blog.A visit from Square Orange Games on the last friday of august has resulted in me spending money, as always, on more new stuff, including; what was meant to be a single 6-man box of Kings of War Ogres, but turned into the box of 6 Ogres and 25 more in an army deal box, giving me a roughly 1000pt Ogre army for Kings of War as well as my Dwarves. I have constructed three of these; two basic melee Ogres and the Captain, which are shown as always with my blog posts in the pictures below:

On the 6th Sept I played another game of Kings of War using my Dwarves, but also including two Ogres I had managed to assemble in time for the game. I managed to draw with my opponent, but on the higher number of points killed, just not enough for a outright win. This was despite several times during the game where things most definately were not in my favour, such as unit of "counts as" Werewolves tearing through my flanks, and were only stopped by the game's end.

The two sides face-off early in the battle

A small unit of warriors attempts to block some undead calvary from flanking my army, they succeeded for a time, but were destroyed by the Werewolves, represented by the three larger creatures behind the calvary!

My cannon is attacked!

Dwarves with Ogre backup go all out to clear some wraiths, only to find themselves attacked by the Werewolves, which tore up my right hand flank!

A brave Ogre attempts to halt the undead advance

My Dwarf Bulwarkers, with phalanx, block the route of advance for a unit of Goblin Spearmen, who also have the phalanx special rule, so it was unit quality which won this part of the battle, in my favour....

In addition to this, I also got a General Conveyor APC and a new Sergeant and Officer for my Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittania force. This makes my Dystopian Legions force a very respectable size and I'm hoping to get a few of these painted and into action in the near future. Having won the two games I played a while back, i'm interested to see how the addition of tougher vehicle units changes the way the games play.So I have been beavering away on my Dystopian Legions - the new officer is nearly completed, along with some more work being done on a few of the basic infantry, my HMG team and the General Conveyor, which is being built and painted in sections before being fully assembled as I find painting some areas of vehicles beyond difficult after assembly.

In other news, I've been painting a SWAT police team member from The Assault Group that I have had on my desk for a while. He is part of a pack of 4 that I've left for far too long, along with most of my painting table.

Last Friday (20th September) I had a 4 player light-hearted game of Bolt Action, with me using my Commandos and the other players scrabbling together some small forces from British Infantry. The game was played on a 6'x4' table, with each player starting in a 12" curve from each corner of the board. The game didn't last long once combat began as each player had very few actual models on the table, although some interesting dice rolls led to some great war stories.

The table at the start of the game, my force is closest, I advanced to the right, basically causing a pair of small skirmishes on one table.

My main squad of Commandos prepares to advance.

My British regulars, used by another player, they guarded this small farmhouse until the end of the game, taking on a patrol that tried to take it with little effort.

My main enemy in the battle, a small British force, inlcuding a PIAT, Vickers Medium Machine Gun and Sniper!

Another of the four players in the game, this force stayed out of the way until the more adventurous had finished each other off, before swooping in.

The Commandos which survived the advance begin to take revenge on the entrenched enemy force.

The terrain my Commando force advanced through to attack the enemy, as SMGs in Bolt Action only have a 12" range.

My British sniper team, so far they've succeeded in being worth their weight in my box, taking kills in every game I've used them in.

My lone Commando captain advances, showing the grit of british soldiers in the face of a rubbish set of enemy shooting rolls!

This Friday just gone, I deployed my forces back onto the (model) battlefields of World War 2, having started assembling my WW2 late war Germans. I took the Germans and my Sherman Firefly (which I've now named Cecil, after the character in the new World War 1 comedy show, Chickens), the Germans were a small Grenadier squad, and two different ranked officers with SMGs - one being a model of Oberststurmfuhrer Otto Skorzeny, the free metal model you get from Warlord Games when you order the Armies of Germany army book directly from them, whom I am using as a Colonel (which in terms of actual Bolt Action counts as a Veteran Major) armed with an SMG. Josh, another member of Dice and Decks Gaming Club, was on my side with my British under his command allied with my Germans against another British force (thus why I am quickly getting my Germans done - stops us having to use British against British). He had two officers, a Lieutenant (for my Veteran Infantry) and a Captain (made from a Commando, for use with my soon to be assembled Commando platoon, of which five and the Captain are built so far), oddly only two pin markers resulted during the game on the Captain, and led to 2 Fubar! results on a morale test, meaning the Captain spent the game running along the table edge furthest from the action as cowardice took over! (highly comical for a Commando Captain to do compared with a Lieutenant - who charged into combat with revolver in hand, again! Despite last time he did so ending badly).

My Germans as of last Friday (27th Sept, a Lieutenant on the left, a squad at the sandbags and my Colonel, using Veteran Major's stats from the rulebook supervises them!

My force ready for the off, you can see my Sherman VC Firefly in the centre, with Germans in the foreground and supporting British infantry around the tank and in the background woodland.

The right flank, you can see part of a Churchill tank that was the main worry in this game, the infantry were shredded due to lucky shooting dice rolling.

The left flank was guarded by this small platoon, with Bren Carrier support, my Sherman destroyed the Carrier having shot and disabled a Churchill on the right flank the previous turn.

My Colonel for my Germans has been painted, and I have assembled more Germans for Bolt Action since that battle. I have also been painting my British Sniper. Below are a few work in progress shot from this last week;

My German Colonel, the model is actually a named character from WW2 which is provided free to people who order Bolt Action: The Armies of Germany directly from Warlord Games. They also provide free characters for other nations if the army book for that nation is bought direct from them.

My Colonel with some of my other German soldiers mid-way through their own painting. The one to the left of the Colonel is my Lieutenant, to the right is an NCO with cap and STG44 Assault Rifle, with an MG42 Light Machine Gunner to the far right.

A few of my Brits, including my Sniper (centre, painted, kneeling whilst aiming soldier), and also my Germans so far.

Thanks for the patience if you've been waiting for a new post, I've spent far too long with this one and will try to update more frequently (at least one post per weekend) if I can. Until next time, folks!.....